Russia’s Presidential Council for Human Rights has asked the United Nations to set up an international commission to investigate alleged executions of Russian servicemen in eastern Ukraine.
«We call for the creation of an international commission to investigate the crimes of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and militants fighting on their side, to conduct a thorough investigation of all known facts and to punish the perpetrators in accordance with international standards and national legislation,» according to a statement carried by Interfax.
The Russian Defense Ministry, it should be recalled, had accused Ukrainian military on Friday of the execution of at least a dozen prisoners of war captured in images it has denounced as a «methodical and intentional murder». Russia had accused Ukraine in March of similar executions.
While the ministry’s statement did not provide details at this stage about the executions, its release coincided with a claim also made Friday by pro-Russian authorities in the Donetsk region of a possible massacre of Russian servicemen in the town of Makivka, just east of the capital.
The Defense Ministry merely reported the number of those executed and noted «new video evidence of mass executions inflicted by Ukrainian servicemen on unarmed Russian prisoners of war confirms the atrocious nature of the Kiev regime.»
For their part, the pro-Russian authorities in Donetsk have announced their intention to hand over the captured images of these possible executions to the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Amnesty International for verification.
«It is difficult to comment on the video of the execution of the surrendered soldiers in the settlement of Makivka without going beyond the normative vocabulary,» denounced the ombudsman of the Russian administration in Donetsk, Daria Morozova, in comments picked up by the Russian agency TASS.
